I was kind of not feeling the blog writing experience with the last few I wrote, but I'm actually really excited to write about the 2016 Spectrum Dance Festival. To preface, I've only been to a rock festival before this and that was the Ansan Rock Festival which, full disclosure, I went to because Key was performing as a collaboration with Axodus singing Hold On. So this was my first dance music festival ever and only the second music festival I've ever been too.
I complain a tonne about festivals on this blog because I'm a hag, but I actually really enjoyed this whole event overall. The weather was lovely and even though I didn't know a lot of the music it was nice to stand around with friends, drink and jam to music casually. There was no pressure to constantly watch the stage and the event was designed for young adults so I felt less like an adult playing at kids games. There are a lot of SHINee fans that are tonnes older than me, but shawols as a fandom are older than others so when we go to group festivals I feel like I'm surrounded by middle school kids and even though I'm not a big drinker, all I want to do at festivals is drink to make things go faster.
I arrived early in the day and had a lot of fun trying out the new Hite/SM collaboration beer. Honestly it's just normal Hite beer with SHINee's name printed on the can, but they were selling it ice cold and even though I usually don't like beer, Hite is mild enough that I can enjoy drinking it when it's nice and cold. The stage was enormous, there was a lot of room and most of the front spots had basically been taken up by shawols with backpacks. A lot of bags on the ground. Which made dancing a little difficult but honestly I can't complain because my friends and I made a huge pile of bags as well.
I think we arrived at around 2pm and SHINee weren't set to come out until 6:30 so we had a lot of time to kill. The schedule said that Dreamstation Crew, which consisted of Key, Luna, Amber, Jungmo and Johnny, were scheduled for 6:30 and they were featuring Beatburger and SHINee were scheduled for 6:40. I guess after printing the schedules they made some huge changes in the line up because Beatburger came out at around 6:40 and performed for quite a while. I don't know a whole lot about Beatburger, except that Shim Jaewon is involved, but I looked it up and apparently they're a 5 member group. If you were watching the live V app stream though you know that the rapper, who might be called MQ, was completely smashed. He was crazy drunk. I know it's common for artists to drink at music festivals before and during their performance, but this Beatburger guy was beyond drunk and really obnoxious. I have every respect for Shim Jaewon who has done some phenomenal work with SHINee over the years, but MQ was a mess. And it was questionable taste for someone who was so lacking in stage charisma or likability to sing a song that consisted of him giving the crowd the middle finger and screaming 'fuck you' over and over. We were pretty happy to see him go.
By now our feet were starting to hurt. We'd been standing at Gangnam Festival for quite a while the day before and by then it'd been 5 hours of standing in the same spot. The crowd was a lot bigger and people were starting to get restless. Dreamstation Crew were such a welcome distraction. If you watched the live stream you know they had a really awesome set list that was well rehearsed and extremely professional. They wore matching outfits designed in collaboration between Key and the fashion brand Charms (where does he find the time to do all this?!?!?!?!?). Amber has amazing stage presence, Jungmo is a phenomenal guitarist and Key really carried the whole thing with his usual Jack of all trades skill. He was really high energy and I think he did a really good job of keeping the energy up and being at a million places at once. He was on point with the choreography, he was constantly moving and engaging the crowd and his rap and vocals were just taking me to church. I had so so much fun at this part of the festival jumping and waving my shabat and dancing along with Key and Amber. Luna appeared later in the performance and her vocals are just so crystal clear and gorgeous.
SM used to throw collaboration stages out as time fillers to try and drag as many fans from different fandoms as possible to catch a huge crowd. A lot of the collabs have felt really last minute, like the artists could only catch an hour or two practice time together before they were having to perform. This was not like that at all. It was a really impressive stage and since there were so many muggles at this event, I hope a lot of them walked away with a new found respect for Key or SM because of how much effort the Dreamstation Crew put into their performance.
Some of the my favorite parts was when Key broke open a bottle of champagne, failed a little at spraying it all over the crowd, but then chugged back a mouthful like a boss and moved on. I guess because I've been a fan since I was in high school and SHINee were high school age, it still feels really novel and exciting to see the drinking alcohol. Strange I know ^.^;; Key also was killing it with the dancing and when he changed into his leather 90s pants and started dancing with one of the female back up dancers he looked so mischievous and like he was having the time of his life. He was really giving it and in his element with the dance style music and remixes. I could see he was really enjoying himself and his joy communicated really well with the crowd. Maybe I'm wearing Key-goggles, but I definitely think he stole the show.
Dreamstation wound down and then we had a brief break before SHINee appeared. I'm going to start off by saying that this was easily, hands down, without a doubt the absolute best performance I have ever seen from SHINee at a festival. I say this because the majority of festivals SHINee performs at are designed for younger audiences, there are tonnes of different idols and they only get to perform 2~3 songs. This time SHINee got full command of the stage for more than 30 minutes, they were performing at a dance festival so all the songs were meant to be high energy dance jams and the average age of the crowd was well over 19 years old.
I was at the front, right on the stage where I was surrounded by shawols and fan sites. There were quite a few girls dancing and jamming and having fun but the majority of people to my left were staying very still and taking videos which I understand but it was also so frustrating because I just wanted everyone to be bouncing the energy back and forth with SHINee and giving them as much as they could as an audience. SHINee performed 7 songs I think. They opened with View and Onew didn't come out for this song. I was really impressed with SM or SHINee or Onew himself. Whoever's making the decision to be really careful with him following his leg injury, I really respect. He came out after View to introduce to 2 new songs and perform Prism and Feel Good. From where I was I couldn't see him too much even though I was very close to the stage, because he was generally on the opposite side to me. From what I could see of him though he looked like he was walking and dancing ok, but he was being very careful. I think the last thing they want is a re-injury right before the comeback. Spectrum was very heavily backed by SM this year and since SHINee were the big name SM threw at it we kind of suspected they might do Prism and Feel Good which is probably the only reason they had Onew come out for those 2 songs. They hyped SHINee so much and didn't want their to be a member missing.
Onew disappeared again and SHINee performed Lucifer next, which was a bit of an odd choice seeing as it's not as dancey as the other tracks. It is SHINee's arguably most popular track among the muggles though so I guess that's why they chose to perform it at a festival where there were quite a lot of muggles about. They then did Beautiful, Savior and Colorful, making their set list total 7 songs. I was very pleasantly surprised to hear Savior among the tracks~
As I said, overall Onew seemed to be in good health. He was very smiley and him and Taemin were being flirty during the talking segments. Taemin tried to grab at Jinki's hand at one point, but his ring got caught in his sweater and Jinki escaped, laughing as Taemin tried to untangle himself. Generally the Lee brothers have been very cute together lately. Seems like Taemin is being very....protective maybe?
Taemin was in really good spirits though and he was having a good time bouncing around. He casually made a couple mistakes in the choreography, but the problem with Taemin is that the mistakes are usually so small you wouldn't notice them, but then he starts laughing at himself and gives it away. He also got tangled in his sweater, smacked himself in the face with his hat and decided clapping was boring and started slapping his own ass, so all in all it was a normal day for Taemin. He was really gorgeous and his smile just lit up the stage though. I think it goes without saying at this point that his dancing is just breathe-taking. He's such an impressive performer, smacking himself in the face with his own hat and all. And his vocals are without reproach, very strong, very clear, very impressive.
Jonghyun hung around on the other end of the stage to me for most of the night so I didn't get to see too much of him. He was very high energy and seemed to be in good spirits though. I feel like Jonghyun is our ace card to drag all the muggles into showing an interest in SHINee's new album. He's violently attractive, has an aura that dudes can respect without feeling like their fragile masculinity is being infringed upon and is a vocal powerhouse. He was really lovely and smirky and rather than radiating joy like Taemin was I get the feeling that Saturday was a very content evening for Jonghyun. He seemed at peace and very comfortable on the stage.
Minho was an absolute nightmare on Saturday. I kept saying to my friend when we were eating dinner after: Minho used to be my safe place. I could trust him not to fuck with me. That's gone now. That's gone ㅠ.ㅠ He's just so attractive and now with the silver hair he's just so much more attractive. And here's the thing about Minho: fans have always been a special brand of gaga for Minho. He just has a magical power over girls. Holy shit has it gotten worse since he dyed his hair. He's also alarmingly aware that he can fuck with us on a whole new level and he's really, really enjoying it. Minho is an angel and he's so lovely and polite and perfect, but he's also a mischievous little imp and he literally pointed at a bunch of girls directly in front of me and winked and thrust and they all FELL OVER. Like on the ground. And he smirked and strutted off. It would have been totally hilarious if there wasn't a pile of girls on my feet and my heart wasn't pounding out of my chest painfully. Minho also thought he'd be really cool and take a drink of water then toss the bottle to someone in the crowd. Unfortunately the girl he threw it to wasn't paying attention and she might have got clocked by the bottle or just surprised by it. I think Minho found her about 3 or 4 times and made eye contact and sorry gestures all throughout the rest of the performance and once more before he left the stage.
Lastly, Key was really living for Spectrum. I think it's pretty obvious he likes dance music and festivals since around this time of year we usually get a spray of sel-kas of him with various friends attending festivals and having fun if he's not too busy. So I'm guessing this was right up Key's alley. It really showed because his performance was joyful and passionate. I really, really enjoyed watching him at Spectrum. That's saying something because I usually really enjoy watching him, but I really really enjoyed it this Saturday.
I actually considered not going to Spectrum. It was an extremely expensive festival. One day entry cost 120,000 won which is roughly a little less than $120 USD. It's a little more economic if you go for 2 days which is 140,000 won, but I knew I wasn't up for that so I saved myself 20,000 and bought the 1 day ticket. It was a lot of fun though and I think SHINee made it well worth the money. Like I said, it was easily the best festival performance I've ever seen from SHINee what with the combination of Key's collab stage and SHINee's whopping 7 track set list. Being able to drink alcohol and not have middle school kids under foot was just an added bonus.
1of1 comeback blog post masterlist
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